Many City Councilors today (21st) had raised the concerns about the impacts of the expanded central government children subsidies to the children care policies of Taichung. Director of Social Affairs Bureau, Jian-der Lu said, Taichung 「One-step daycare」policy will create the win-win situation to make the parents carefree for their children care and establish a complete industry of the children care. With the central government subsidies, the local governments can keep the flexibility to provide the tailor made programs for making the children care policies more complete. Besides, the officer of Health Bureau said, in addition to the current available maternal services provided by the central government, the City Government has the other subsidized services provided, including pre-pregnancy health check and maternal Down’s syndrome screening etc. to encourage the citizens to give the births to their children.

Taichung Council has the queries on the civil administration business, Councilor Shi-kai Chen, Jou-kuo Chiang, Chung Lee and Feng-yu Chang were all concerning about the policies of the children care, children education, how to elevate birth rate and the impacts of the expanded central government children subsidies to the children care policies of Taichung.

Director Lu said, in addition to the one-step daycare policy, the expanded central government children subsidies would provide the same reimbursement to all the civil nationwide so the synergy effects of the policies was collected. However, the local children care policies may still need to be tailor made and localized.

The officer of Social Affairs Bureau explained, building up a friendly children care environment is an important administrative objective of Taichung City Government. Executive Yuan has expanded the children subsidies and Taichung City Government is happy to see it happened. To align with the central policy related details, the City Government will propose and design the required approaches to adjust the current regulations of subsidies to provide the comprehensive children care services for the families with young children.

Councilor Shi-kai Chen said, the children care service in Taichung is good and recognized by 91% of citizens but only 4 public children daycare centers are available in Taichung. He suggested to have more public daycare centers established to elevate the effectiveness of the one-step daycare policy.

Director of Social Affairs Bureau, Jian-der Lu said, Taichung children care policies are diverse, including home care, public daycare centers, nanny for babysitting etc. Among these policies, the number of nannies for children care have climbed up to more than 3,700 from more than 2,800 after the launch of the one-step daycare policy. By now, there are 4 public funded and private operational baby daycare centers located in Shalu, Fengyuan, Taiping and Qingshui Districts. There will be 3 more located in Pinglin, Dali and Daya Districts in 2018. To align with the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Project, 4 community public children daycare hometowns will be established in 2018 and 2019 with two by two, respectively, to fulfill the different needs of the parents.

Also, Councilor Feng-yu Chang has recognized the policy of「one-step daycare 2.0」 proposed by the City Government for improving the source of service providers; however, the birth rate was hard to elevate for the expensive prenatal examinations. Therefore, the motivation of pregnancy is suggested to stimulate the willingness to give the births.

The officer of Health Bureau said, in addition to 10 times of prenatal examinations and prenatal care subsidies provided by the central Government, Taichung City Government will have additional pre-pregnancy health checks, including for male with NT$680 and for female with NT$1,870; for the low-income and middle/ low-income households, the maternal Down’s syndrome screening will be provided to allow the pregnant women to carry their healthy babies. After the births of children, the「Mommy’s Call in service」 will be provided in 14 days to concern the mothers by the outbound calls from the staffs of poly clinics. All the health consultation services, including newborn care, breast feeding, postpartum care and immunization etc. will be provided.